Black and grey dotwork tattoo of a horned, goat-headed robed figure beside a flame and candle, with sun and moon motifs, on the thigh.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Goat-headed robed figure with flame on thigh

Dotwork · Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

A large diptych shows a horned, goat-headed figure in a layered robe, standing before a flame rising from a candle or stand. Sun and moon faces sit in the upper corners, and a geometric pattern of triangles and circles fills the background. The shading is built from fine stippled dots and bold black outlines, with grey tones in the robe and fur, and the inset close-up shows the detail of the face and horns.

Dotwork Blackwork Thigh Goat Horn Robe Flame Candle Sun Moon Geometric pattern Triangle Figure

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit down, sit down, you're letting the cold in through the lift doors. Right. The old man on the fourteenth floor, Mr Abernethy, kept a goat in his flat. Not a pet. A goat that had been there longer than the building, he said, and the council never found the paperwork to shift it. Every night at eleven he lit one candle on the windowsill, and the whole block could smell the wax through the vents.

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Nobody complained, because the goat would stand at the lift shaft with its long horns pressed against the mesh and watch you, and it never blinked. Its robe hung to the floor, grey as the stairwell and heavy with pleats like the folds on a church statue. Where the flame sat, the robe went bright and quiet at once. The children swore the sun and the moon kept watch from the two corners of the landing, one on each side, pretending to sleep.

Then came the winter of the big power cut. The lifts stopped, and Mrs Okafor's boy got stuck between the eleventh and twelfth floors with his torch dying in his fist. Abernethy climbed all fourteen flights with his candle cupped in both hands, and the goat walked behind him on the stairs, step by step, never once slipping on the wet concrete. When the boy saw that flame coming up through the dark, he swore the goat was carrying the light, not the old man.

So if the power goes tonight, don't go hunting for the torch. Look up at the windowsill. The candle will be burning, and nobody I know has ever seen the goat come down the stairs.